Summary

On June 1, 2002, sixty-eight after-work athletes and other “weekend warriors” set off from Saint John, New Brunswick, for a sweaty day of competitive adventure: 15 kilometres of trail running, 40K of mountain biking, and 12 kilometres of sea kayaking on the legendary Bay of Fundy. However, as a storm swept across the final paddling section, what began as a fun introduction to the sport of adventure racing soon turned into a tragedy that would haunt many of the participants for years to come.

Fatal Tide: When the Race of a Lifetime Goes Wrong is a work of investigative journalism that dramatizes, in the storytelling style of such non-fiction bestsellers as Into the Wild and The Perfect Storm, precisely what happened at the controversial Fundy Multi-Sport Race. Fatal Tide also explores the psychology of risk taking in the outdoors, the contemporary culture of reality TV and extreme sports, the science and treatment of hypothermia, as well as the legal and emotional fallout from the first death of an adventure racer in North America.